The English Orphans; Or, A Home in the New World

by Mary Jane Holmes

For once the merry Jenny cried, wondering how she could help being healthy and fat. Before Mrs. Lincoln left Chicopee, she made a discovery, which resulted in the removal of Jenny to Boston. With the exception of the year at Mount Holyoke, Jenny had never before passed a winter in the country, and now everything delighted her. In spite of her governess's remonstrance, all her leisure moments were spent in the open air, and besides her long walks, she frequently joined the scholars, who from the district school came over at recess to slide down the long hill in the rear of Mrs. Campbell's barns and stables. For Jenny to ride down hill at all was bad enough, "but to do so with district school girls, and then be drawn up by coarse, vulgar boys, was far worse;" and the offender was told to be in readiness to accompany her mother home, for she could not stay in Chicopee another week.

"Oh, I'm so glad," said Rose, "for now I shan't freeze to death nights."

Mrs. Lincoln demanded what she meant, and was told that Jenny insisted upon having the window down from the top, let the weather be what it might; "and," added Rose 'when the wind blows hard I am positively obliged to hold on to the sheets to keep myself in bed!"

"A Mount Holyoke freak," said Mrs. Lincoln. "I wish to mercy neither of you had ever gone there."

Rose answered by a low cough, which her mother did not hear, or at least did not notice. Jenny, who loved the country and the country people, was not much pleased with her mother's plan. But for once Mrs. Lincoln was determined, and after stealing one more sled-ride down the long hill, and bidding farewell to the old desk in the school-house, sacred for the name carved three years before with Billy Bender's jack-knife, Jenny went back with her mother to Boston, leaving Rose to droop and fade in the hot, unwholesome atmosphere of Miss Hinton's school-room.

Not long after Jenny's return to the city, she wrote to Mary an amusing account of her mother's reason for removing her from Chicopee. "But on the whole, I am glad to be at home," said she, "for I see Billy Bender almost every day. I first met him coming down Washington Street, and he walked with me clear to our gate. Ida Selden had a party last week, and owing to George Moreland's influence, Billy was there. He was very attentive to me, though Henry says 'twas right the other way. But it wasn't. I didn't ask him to go out to supper with me. I only told him I'd introduce him to somebody who would go, and he immediately offered me his arm. Oh, how mother scolded, and how angry she got when she asked me if I wasn't ashamed, and I told her I wasn't!

"Billy doesn't appear just as he used to. Seems as though something troubled him; and what is very strange, he never speaks of you, unless I do first. You've no idea how handsome he is. To be sure, he hasn't the air of George Moreland, and doesn't dress as elegantly, but I think he's finer looking. Ever so many girls at Ida's party asked who he was, and said 'twas a pity he wasn't rich, but that wouldn't make any difference with me,—I'd have him just as soon as though he was wealthy.

"How mother would go on if she should see this! But I don't care,—I like Billy Bender, and I can't help it, and entre nous, I believe he likes me better than he did! But I must stop now, for Lizzie Upton has called for me to go with her and see a poor blind woman in one of the back alleys."

From this extract it will be seen that Jenny, though seventeen years of age, was the same open-hearted, childlike creature as ever. She loved Billy Bender, and she didn't care who knew it. She loved, too, to seek out and befriend the poor, with which Boston, like all other large cities, abounded. Almost daily her mother lectured her upon her bad taste in the choice of her associates, but Jenny was incorrigible, and the very next hour might perhaps be seen either walking with Billy Bender, or mounting the rickety stairs of some crazy old building, where a palsied old woman or decrepit old man watched for her coming, and blessed her when she came.

Early in the spring Mr. Lincoln went up to Chicopee to make some changes in his house, preparatory to his family's removal thither. When he called at Mrs. Campbell's to see Rose, he was greatly shocked at her altered and languid appearance. The cough, which her mother had not observed fell ominously on his ear; for he thought of a young sister who many years before in the bloom of girlhood had passed away from his side. A physician was immediately called and after an examination Rose's lungs were pronounced diseased, though not as yet beyond cure. She was of course taken from school; and with the utmost care, and skilful nursing, she gradually grew better.